Here:
http://www.scarleteen.com/article/politics/magical_cups_bloody_brides_virginity_in_context
Especially -
Where does all this leave me?
Where it should. Only YOU can define your sexual life. Someone else can't do it for you, and you shouldn't allow anyone else to do so, ever. Virginity shouldn't be something you use to devalue or judge others, or by which you should be judged or devalued. Even if we are treated as such, none of us are objects to be owned; we are whole people who own ourselves as well as our own sexual identity and value. Virginity shouldn't be a symbol of status (unless, that is, you still have a bride price, in which case, you have bigger problems than figuring out what virginity is), or a lack thereof. Sex isn't something that should be used as a bargaining chip for anything, or used to manipulate. If it is, you aren't doing it right, and boy, are you missing out.
Your sexuality is something you will have with you all of your life. It is yours by birth, and it starts developing before you are even born. No one can give it to you, or take it away. How much or how little value you give it is solely up to you. If you can have sex responsibly and safely and feel good about it, it makes you no less or more of a good person or a person of value that someone who feels good about being sexually inactive, abstinent, or celibate. If you feel best being sexually inactive, and like to define yourself as a virgin by whatever definition you have, that's great, too.
But that value has to lie with you -- not with current or potential partners, or with your family or friends. If the only value your sexuality has to you is what others think of it, you may very well find that your sexual life will be very empty, and you'll be apt to let others make choices for you, or influence your choices, in an arena where to be healthy, you need to be making them yourself.
Much of the misinformation, myth and practice surrounding female virginity has been cultivated in times when women could not make their own choices. But those times are past for many women, unless you choose to perpetuate them. Ultimately, it is in your hands, and those of other women right now, to take the initiative to "own" yourself and your sexuality. Whatever way you choose to do so, so long as it feels right to you physically, emotionally and intellectually, and you make your choices responsibly and thoughtfully is the right way. If you do so on your own, and own your own sexuality, by what "virgin" is really supposed to mean, well...you're being the best kind of virgin there is, the kind who is autonomous, and, like the Greek goddess Diana, cannot be owned by anyone and is pure at heart... and that's the place where you CAN tell.
